For the first time in my life a spam email has prompted me to actually go to the website being promoted AND to do further internet research. Such was my reaction that it took me a good couple of moments before I even appreciated that the email I had received was in fact spam. So congratulations, creative spam person, you have managed to put your (dead) link into the consciousness of this normally savvy computer user. The entire text of the email reads as follows (with links removed and my favourite bits bolded):

SYDNEY, February 18, 2007 08:56pm (AEDT) - The Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard have survived a heart attack. Mr Howard, 67 years old, was at Kirribilli House in Sydney, his prime residence, when he was suddenly stricken. Mr Howard was taken to the Royal North Shore Hospital where the best surgeons of Australia are struggling for his life.

Click on the link below to get the latest information on the health of the Prime Minister:

The Australian - keeping the nation informed [this had a link in it]

John Howard was born on the 26th of July, 1939. Howard is Australia’s second longest serving Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party in Australia.

Howard was born at, a suburb of Sydney Australia. He attended Earlwood Primary School and then Canterbury Boys’ High School. Howard graduated from the University of Sydney with a bachelor of Laws and in 1961.

Prime Minister John Howard was sworn Australian PM in 1996 and has subsequently won the next 3 elections, being in 1998, 2001 and 2004. He is considered a conservative politician and has described himself as “the most conservative leader the Liberals have ever had”.

Prime Minister Howard was a strong supporter of the war with Iraq and has been criticized for blindly following the lead of the United States president George W Bush. Australian troops entered Iraq with the United States and British lead force. This became an unpopular decision for Howard, particularly after no weapons of mass destruction was found in Iraq (the main reason for starting a war with Iraq and ousting the leader Suddam Husein).

John Howard and his wife Janette have three children together; Melanie, Tim and Richard Howard.

It’s the details that make it special. If there had actually been a real web page at the end of this link, I would have been intriged to know what it might have been selling.

UPDATE - apparently the email was supposed to have a zip attachment containing a trojan. I totally missed the point because my server strips out most attachments.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 2:32 pm by dan and is filed under random musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.